by Kevin Casey
This was a fishbowl shaped like a giant brandy snifter, furnished with crystal stones, a plastic plant, and a betta fish that remained largely motionless in its stylized bonsai pond. For the woman who set it on the receptionist’s counter, it was a testament to her caprice, her sole challenge to tedium, an oasis of color to brighten her day. On the morning she arrived to find the cobalt drapery of its fins hanging slack, she poured the fish’s lustreless remains into the loo, committing them to the city’s waterworks. But she returned the fishbowl to the desk, now holding nothing but its glossy glass lozenges, high and dried of any meaning. And when she pulled up anchor for another job, the fishbowl remained in that same place for years, one of countless artifacts we abandon and throw overboard in this sea of flotsam, emptied of significance, knocking and bobbing in our wake. AUTHOR Kevin Casey is the author of Ways to Make a Halo (Aldrich Press, 2018) and American Lotus, winner of the 2017 Kithara Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). And Waking... was published by Bottom Dog Press in 2016. His poems have appeared in Rust+Moth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Connotation Press, Pretty Owl Poetry, Poet Lore and Ted Kooser's syndicated column ‘American Life in Poetry.’ For more, visit andwaking.com
1 Comment
11/30/2019 05:06:02 am
There's just one thing I want to do right now. I know this is all nothing but hot air. I am just trying to finish what I am supposed to be doing and people don't really care what I have to say. I am not even sure if there are people actually reading this. Yet if I intend to show it to you one day, it better be nice. Will you have time for this? Will you read this? In as much as I don't wish you any trouble, I hope someday you get stranded somewhere and get a chance to read this just to fight boredom.
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